Well...
If we are able to come to this conclusions, so are others, possibly even better informed. There must be at least half a milion beings, Mundane, Awakened and Emerged, who sees Deus in the background of every single event since Shutdown. Deus was not the only AI there, also Maegera and others come to play. I dont see them dancing to Deus tunes, and I dont think that if Deus remains what it was before...and kept its own self-aware identity, there is really small chance, in the world of technomancers able to dive in the Streams of Resonance to find out even destroyed data, that Deus will remain unnoticed. And if it changes itself to the level where its own identity become different from what it was, it aint Deus any more. It is my opinion, that you can find some strings of Deus code in every single AI there is in the Matrix. Well this doesn`t make them being Deus.
In this discussion there is very significant difference between what artifical inteligence is, even if self-aware, and what Consensus would be if it is some kind of Memetic entity, possibly self aware. Such memetic entity would never need to succeed in Touring test, because that test is part of its consciousness. Such being would feel completely alien to artifical inteligences, even if it would be willing to recognize them as equal, because memtic consciousness would be very different at its core from binary logic of computer-born AI. Such entity would also consider every "meme carrier" as valuable part of itself...and since Dawkins told us that every Meme is for this being what Gene is for living organism, we may consider this memeplex to be some kind of reflection of every sapient being`s desires and choices, and to be possibly even superrior to artifical inteligence, who can be considered equal part of this being as any metahuman, contributing with its own memes. That may be reason why AIs and other protosapient being (even any extraterrestrial inteligence connected) should be considered equal by Consensus (memeplex) agreement.
